Nothing like a few wholly self-absorbed, fallow people to completely derail a brilliant culture jam

[jawnbc]

So misia makes a wonderful, powerful, concise post, and it starts a great même for those who've experienced sexual violence:

I'm Hanne. I'm a survivor of sexual violence.
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

Brilliant.

Very shortly thereafter some suggests adding domestic violence--there's often an overlap, and the link--gender-related violence, most often perpetrated against women--is clear. And so it begins to unravel. Folks soon start adding their own criteria for sexual violence--things like "being objectified without my permission." So powerful becomes diluted, concise becomes verbose, and then the in-fighting begins--whose terms are right, whose criteria?

Some have also brought in being emotionally abused for not conforming well to gender archetypes. One person actually claimed his father berating him about being effeminate was just as painful as a women's experience with rape. That sort of equivocation doesnt' make me think "survivor"--more like "self-absorped wanker".

Regardless of life history.

Oh, and just for the record, My Name is John, and I survived domestic sexual abuse. No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

And no misplaced sense that I have much in common with the women of Srebenica and Rwanda.

Some people can be such eejits--in the name of "healing".

Comments

[jawnbc]

Be who you are, do what you have to do. But be willing to move outside the comfort zone if you want life to change significantly.


At least, that's been mine experience.

[nutmeggie.livejournal.com]

It's not a comfort zone thing. It's just, to me someone who is a survivor is someone who DID things. Like the gladiator that survived.

I dunno. I'm not expressing it right. Like that it's a verb instead of a noun.

But yeah you're prolly right. And it is too bad a bunch of people had to go in there and stomp all over it.

[deafdyke.livejournal.com]

Well, you can say that the work in becoming a survivor is largely emotional. And it's not something that can ever be called "over and done with" for many people.

as for comparing different forms of abuse, I think it's valid to accept that it takes many forms, and someone can be just as damaged (and often more so) by emotional and verbal abuse. The problem is in making comparisons rather than being mutually supportive.

I agree . . .

[jawnbc]

. . . but after many years in "the recovery community" too often it became Duling Suffering. Both (or more) battling over whose been hurt more (or worse), rather than commiserating.

And I do think that for a lot of people, it's the realization that, yeah, other's experience might have. in fact, been worse than their own.

But when someone's trying to bring attention to a clear issue (sexual violence, domestic violence), if any and all things that are abuse or violence are tacked on, the original issue is subsumed. And that's exactly the problem--no clarity.

[nutmeggie.livejournal.com]

Yes, because the damage to me can be different from the damage to you, but the point is we both suffered damage that is real. Right? And hopefully what one would learn from that is that damage is damage, I don't need to compound it by trivialising yours in order to make mine look more significant.

[mondragon.livejournal.com]

On the flip side, support/discussion groups that focus on specific kinds of damaging experiences that some people may be ashamed to talk about can be useful, so people can say "that happened to you, too?" But I agree completely about the evil of trivializing other people's experiences and pain.

[nutmeggie.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I spent a long time looking through that whole thing, and a lot of the basic things that are fundamentally wrong in this place are quite evident but there's a lot of good there too.